robgb said:
When I was a kid, if something was stamped Made in Japan, it was considered a piece of crap. Nowadays the Japanese are known for their great, often innovative products.
That one product was made in Asia and another was made in Europe makes less and less of a difference these days.
People really need to get over this east vs. west mentality. There are sweatshops in Europe, too. Hell, there are sweatshops in the U.S. There are also production lines in western countries that work at the same pace as the production lines in Asia.
It's pretty silly to make a presumption about a product based on its manufacturer's country of origin. They're ALL capable of making quality as well as crap.
True, but, now that the japanese have perfected the manufacturing process, they have become super anal and totally process oriented (a good thing for consumers). However, along the way they found out that quality of product and costs of manufacturing a great, comparable product to the rest of the world hiked their prices up a ton. The current japanese cars, for example, are the same price (or more) than the american cars.
In the future, I have confidence that the chinese manufacturers will get their act together (like japan), but the goverment attitude has to change politically for that to ever happen. If they can get past that, the budget chinese mics will be history and prices will rise to the norm.
The current chinese products are possible because most importers just go to china, see a mic, ask how much to buy 1000 and slap their logo on it and that is the end of it. The importer just advertises the cheap product and charges triple what he pays for it. You buy a bad one? No problem, he gives you a new one for free + shipping and handleing (which pays for the cost of him buying the mic in bulk).
This IS how it works. I worked for a Home theater company that, at the time, was the top rated, top selling system. We bought speakers and power amps rom china. Tested them before building. We threw out at least 1/2 of tose shitty cheap speakers because it would have been too expensive to return them. You got credit from the chinese manufacturer. The power amps were not much better. My poor techs had to fix so many of them.
This system was selling at the time for like $2500 and up.
Years later - This company is still around. Overhauled and re-designed stuff as they went into bankruptcy on the returns of like 90% of their great systems.
Cheap components, cheap labor, unchecked process, bad QC all takes its toll on the company in the end.
Therefore, it is not the price that the consumer pays for a product that dictates whether it is a great product or a bad product. It is the reputation and long-term buisiness that you pay for. There is alot of value in the reputation and longevity of companies like Shure, Neumann, AKG and Audio Technica to list a few.